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What Happens When … The Courts Don't Care About Your Rights? By Richard W. Stevens "We need to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court!" With jaws set and fists clenched, so many gun owners want to charge forth into the courtrooms to win our right to keep and bear arms. Many Americans think that the truth is all you need to cause a court to declare our rights as the law of the land. A group of decent California gun owners tested that idea. They challenged that state's ban on certain semi-automatic firearms, hoping the lower courts...

The Supreme Court disappointed gun rights groups Monday by refusing to consider whether the Constitution guarantees people a personal right to own a gun. The court has never said if the right to "keep and bear arms" applies to individuals. Although the Bush administration has endorsed individual gun-ownership rights, it did not encourage the justices to resolve the issue in this case, involving a challenge of California laws banning high-powered weapons. Many other groups wanted the court to take the politically charged case, including the National Rife Association, the Pink Pistols, a group of gay and lesbian gun owners; the...

Silveira has been posted to 11-26 conference http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/03-51.htm further info on case is at www.keepandbeararms.com r

Haas'GuidetoSmallArmsAmmunition USENET Responses to KABA's latest tripe Apparently KABA's "anti-NRA/send me money instead" schtick is getting old. Within a few minutes of KABA's latest pollution of the internet, their attack on Dave Kopel... > KOPEL CLUELESS: > Silveira Lawsuit Attacker is Shooting Blanks > by Roy Lucas > This is the rebuttal National Review Online's Editor repeatedly said > they would run, stringing us along for over a week, but now refuses > to run. This was ready to share over a week ago, but we waited based > on strong, clear assurances from NRO that they'd give us...

Haas'GuidetoSmallArmsAmmunition KABA asking for cash - AGAINRisking the Second Amendment on raffles KABA, the one-man website run out of a garage, is asking for your money again so they can play lawyer at the USSC level, placing your Second Amendment rights at great risk. Can we tell it like it is? That KABA is a handful of ignorant militants who simply attack all that is NRA (send them money instead!) and has placed our Second Amendment rights in dire jepoardy if their awful case gets USSC cert? Here is KABA's latest screed... > Gun Rights Rifle Raffle: > We...

There are three possibilities here: 1: SCOTUS refuses to hear the case. It goes away, someone tries again. No actions on your part can improve this scenario. 2: SCOTUS rules against us. That seems to be the big fear here. “But what if we loooooooooose?” I hear people whine. Fact is, most District and lower courts are of the opinion that we don’t have a 2nd Amendment. Several of those judicial opinions are why this case exists, right? If you step into the arena, there’s a risk of losing. But if you refuse to fight, you have lost preemptively. And...

Secret Weapon Some 2nd Amendment lawyers help the gun-ban side. By Dave Kopel EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is the first of two parts on Second Amendment litigation. The gun-prohibition lobbies have what amounts to a secret weapon. Even better, from the point of view of the gun-prohibition lobbies, this secret weapon is entirely funded by naïve gun owners This secret weapon is the attorneys who mount ill-considered constitutional challenges to gun laws, setting up gun rights to lose quickly, rather than to win with deliberation. Perhaps the most infamous of these cases was Quillici v. Morton Grove, although the harm...

Recently Mr. David Kopel published a two-part editorial [1] criticizing the case Silveira v. Lockyer.[2] The criticisms have been answered in part by more than a few people.[3] I would also like to respond, based upon my own experience in Washington, DC, interacting with the U.S. Supreme Court for over 40 years. I do not know Mr. Kopel well, but I know much about the Supreme Court and its Justices, going back to 1964, when Mr. Kopel was four years old. I know this from arguing cases, writing briefs, writing cert petitions, and reading biographies of the justices. I could,...

Reply from Stephen Halbrook >b>Stephen Halbrook Responds to KABA Bashing----------------------------------- The following reply is available at CalGunlaws.com10/14/2003 ----------------------------------- The debate over which which case is better for the United States Supreme Court has led THE Keep and Bear Arms (KABA) website to publicly criticize NRA attorney Stephen Halbrook, stating that he "appears not only unprepared to effectively argue a Second Amendment case, but ready to give up the farm - to register handguns and call it 'reasonable' - when he gets his day in court." CalGunLaws.com obtained a copy of Mr. Halbrook's response to the KABA's accusations. Mr. Halbrooks...

NRA Members' Councils of California Please Distribute Widely To All Gun Owners/Groups ----------------------------------- NRA MEMBERS' COUNCILS OF CALIFORNIA10/07/2003 ----------------------------------- Don B. Kates on Silveira v. Lockyer SILVEIRA: SECOND AMENDMENT SUICIDEBy Don B. Kates There is enormous controversy over the attempt to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review the disastrous Silveira case. (Silveira v. Lockyer, 328 F.3d 567; 9th Cir. 2003). I have very strong views on the subject which I shall have to state somewhat simplistically because of word limitations. The Unsophisticated View and the Wrong View There are two quite different ideas that are expressed by people...

Haas'GuidetoSmallArmsAmmunition An activist's views on Silveira v. Lockyer Occasionally I see internet email from the people promoting the Silveira v. Lockyer case - they ask for money to help move this case forward, reminding me that they are "down to the bottom of the barrel". Accordingly, I've tried to formulate an opinion of my own on this effort vying for USSC cert. The result? I could not. I quickly realized that I am not qualified to determine the merits (or lack thereof) of this case which may affect the firearms rights of all gun-owners now and in the future....

Another interesting turn of events has occurred in the Silveira v. Lockyer Second Amendment lawsuit. Our legal experts advise that this new development suggests that the Supreme Court will probably be granting certiorari in this case -- that they will most likely be hearing the case. On September 22, the Court issued a "Request for Response" to the Petition for a Supreme Court hearing of this true Second Amendment case -- a "request" that was sent to California attorney general Bill Lockyer and copied to lead Silveira attorney Gary Gorski. (See U.S. Supreme Court docket for Silveira v. Lockyer.) Why...

The Silveira Threat How long will the Second Amendment live? Silveira v. Lockyer is a Second Amendment lawsuit which has, according to Gun Week (Sept. 1) "gained almost cult status among gun owners." This status is mostly to the benefit of the gun-prohibition lobby, for Silveira has already seriously harmed Second Amendment rights, and the damage may not be over. The suit was filed in February 2000, to challenge the 1999 amendments to the 1989 California "assault-weapon" control act (AWCA). The complaint blew its credibility on at the very beginning, opening with a fabricated quote attributed to Hitler. The quote...

According to attorney Don Kilmer, the Nordyke v. King lawsuit will be refused further consideration by the Ninth Circuit until the Silveira case's petition for a writ of certiorari to the US Supreme Court is decided. Silveira v. Lockyer, challenging the 26-page assault-weapons regulatory scheme enacted in California in 2000, was defeated in the Ninth Circuit on the basis of the decades-old Hickman v. Block case, in which a three-judge panel of that court held that the Second Amendment secures only a collective, not an individual, right. The petition to the Supreme Court was filed shortly thereafter. The Nordyke v....

Friend of the Court Brief filed in United States Supreme Court Contact: Maria Heil of Second Amendment Sisters, 877-797-4857 (press only) or email: press@2asisters.org AUSTIN, TX-August 8, 2003-A friend of the Court brief has been filed by the nation’s leading pro-self-defense women’s organization, Second Amendment Sisters, Inc.(SAS) In July, a Petition for Writ of Certiorari was filed in the United States Supreme Court in the case of Silveira, et al. vs. Lockyer, et al. This week, Second Amendment Sisters filed an Amicus Curiae (or Friend of the Court) brief supporting the Petitioners and citing reasons for the Supreme Court to...

Silveira v. Lockyer lawsuit could settle decades of controversy FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 3, 2003 CONTACTS: Gary Gorski, Attorney for Plaintiffs Cell: (916) 276-8997 Office: (916) 965-6800 Fax: (916) 965-6801 Angel Shamaya, director, KeepAndBearArms.com Office: (928) 522-8833 A Second Amendment lawsuit was petitioned to the U.S. Supreme Court today -- just in time for Independence Day. The case Silveira v. Lockyer, which originated in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, was previously appealed to the U. S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, resulting in a deeply divided ruling. The lawsuit seeks to address at least two...

The Ninth Circuit has issued an en banc denial for a rehearing in Silveira v. Lockyer. This was a challenge to the CA Assault Weapons ban. That the most liberal circuit court in the land would deny a hearing is no surprise. What is surprising is that 4 of the court's judges, including Judge Pregerson, whom Eugene Volokh calls "one of the most liberal judges on the Ninth Circuit -- and perhaps in the whole country", would issue such stinging dissents. The most thorough of the dissents is by Judge Kleinfeld. Kleinfeld writes... About twenty percent of the American population,...